NAME
Net-Pcap - Interface to pcap(3) LBL packet capture library
DESCRIPTION
The Net::Pcap module is a Perl binding to the LBL pcap(3) packet
capture library.
The source code for the LBL pcap library can be found at
http://www.tcpdump.org/
INSTALLATION
If your pcap header files are installed somewhere strange, create
the Makefile using the INC and/or LIBS option.
$ perl Makefile.PL INC=-I/usr/local/include/pcap \
LIBS='-L/usr/lib/pcap -lpcap'
Compile the extension as per usual:
$ make
$ make test
$ make install
To install the extension in a private directory, you can use the
PREFIX option when creating Makefile.PL.
A ANSI-compliant compiler is required to compile the extension.
For most of the tests, an administrative account is required
since opening a network interface in promiscuous mode is a
privileged operation. Some tests also require a working network
interface with traffic on it otherwise the tests will appear to
hang. You can generate traffic by pinging a non existing IP
address on your network segment. Consult the source for individual
tests for more information.
Net::Pcap has been tested by the author on the following systems,
but is likely to run on many more:
- Linux 2.6, gcc 3.4.1
- FreeBSD 4.7, gcc 2.95.4
- Mac OS X 10.4, gcc 4.0
Net::Pcap is compatible with all the versions of the Pcap library,
including the old BSD ones and the Windows port WinPcap.
Net::Pcap should work on any Perl since 5.004_05. This module has
been tested by the author to check that it works with the following
versions ot Perl:
- Perl 5.4.5 i686-linux (custom build)
- Perl 5.5.3 i686-linux (custom build)
- Perl 5.6.2 i686-linux (custom build)
- Perl 5.8.5 i386-linux-thread-multi (vendor build)
- Perl 5.6.1 i386-freebsd (custom build)
- Perl 5.8.7 i386-freebsd (custom build)
- Perl 5.8.6 darwin (vendor build)
- Perl 5.8.7 cygwin-thread-multi-64int (vendor build)
For Perl 5.004, you may need to install ExtUtils::Constant with
this patch:
http://public.activestate.com/cgi-bin/perlbrowse?patch=25927
See also the corresponding CPAN Testers page:
http://testers.cpan.org/show/Net-Pcap.html
HISTORY
The original version of Net::Pcap, version 0.01, was written by
Peter Lister

using SWIG.
Version 0.02 was created by Bo Adler
with a few bugfixes but not uploaded to CPAN. It can be found at:
http://www.buttsoft.com/~thumper/software/perl/Net-Pcap/
Versions 0.03 and 0.04 were created by Tim Potter (TIMPOTTER) who
entirely rewrote Net::Pcap using XS and wrote the documentation,
with the help of David N. Blank-Edelman for
testing and general polishing.
Version 0.05 was released by Marco Carnut (KCARNUT) with fixes
to make it work with Cygwin and WinPcap.
Version 0.04.02 was independantly created by Jean-Louis Morel
(JLMOREL) but not uploaded on the CPAN. It can be found here:
http://www.bribes.org/perl/wnetpcap.html
Based on Tim Potter's version 0.04, it included fixes for WinPcap
and added wrappers for several new libpcap functions as well as
WinPcap specific functions.
COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE
Copyright (C) 2005 Sébastien Aperghis-Tramoni. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 2003 Marco Carnut. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1999-2000 Tim Potter. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1998 Bo Adler. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1997 Peter Lister. All rights reserved.
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the same terms as Perl itself.